Not too long ago swimmer Carson Owlett ’17 was just a casual poker fan that had fun playing online. Recently, though, Owlett has been taking poker more seriously. Carson, along with eight other students at Conn, just competed for the title of best collegiate poker team in the United States. Owelett and his teammates Ashley Giordano, Roberto Gochicoa, Deion Jordan, Sean Lee, Will Stoddard, Sam Turco, all class of 2017, Mark Ferreira ’15, and Karl Johnson ’18 came up just short of winning the national title when they lost to Florida State University, a team made up of 70 players. “The most disappointing part about the loss,” says Owlett, “is that we beat those guys pretty good earlier in the year”. How is it, then, that a team of nine made a run at the national championship as major underdogs? “It isn’t too complicated really, me and my friends got together and started paying poker. We got really into it and started looking at online leagues and stuff like that. We found this one at www.collegepokertour.com and since then we have played all the way to the championship,” said Owlett.
Even after the team lost their final match though the season didn’t end. There is a team portion of this college poker tour, but there is also an individual part as well. Seven of the nine members of the team managed to earn the right to compete for a $10,000 prize in the form of a scholarship. In order to qualify to win the $10,000 prize, participants need to go through four rounds of play. The students play no limit Texas Hold ‘Em. The final nine players of the fourth round are flown out to Scottsdale, Arizona (all expenses paid) where they will compete against one another May 30 on live television for the $10,000 prize and the claim to the United States top collegiate poker player. Some players on the team managed to qualify for round one simply by playing in and earning a spot. Giordano and Jordan qualified for round one and then went on to finish round one in the top nine, and moved on to round two. Turco and Johnson received automatic qualification bids to round three because of their rank on the tour. Ferrera, Gochicoa and Owlett all received automatic qualification bids to round four based on their rankings on the tour. The events were streamed live on twitch.tv on April 19.
Gochicoa emerged as the top individual player for the Camels and clinched the 9th invite spot for the individual national championship. He will be flown out to Scottsdale at the end of May along with other top poker players from around the country.
Owlett hopes that after this year he will be able to make his team a little more official. He has applied to make the team an official club, and is even trying to get the school to approve the team as a club sport. He encourages anyone that is interested in playing to email him. “It doesn’t matter if you’re an expert or you’ve never played poker in your life. If you’re interested just shoot me an email and we would be more than happy to have you,” he said. He hopes that the team will grow in size so that they can compete with the larger teams like Florida State University. •
